Benedictine, SVA win golf championships

By Mike BrownFor the Savannah Morning News

Tuesday

Apr 2, 2019 at 10:44 PMApr 2, 2019 at 10:44 PM

SCD's Reed Lotter & SVA's Emma Saunders win individual medals

There was no question about St. Vincent’s Academy standout Emma Saunders being in pain Monday afternoon as she played in the City of Savannah High School Golf Championship at Bacon Park despite a pulled back muscle.

Playing what coach Karye Moreau called “grandma golf,” Saunders gutted her way to medalist honors thanks to a two-hole playoff win over Savannah Arts Academy’s Alvia Rukmana.

The two had tied with 44s and Saunders won the playoff with a bogey on No. 2, when Rukmana had a six-foot putt slide past the hole.

Savannah Country Day’s Reed Lotter, an ebullient and personable freshman, took medalist honors for the boys with a one-over par 72.

Benedictine Military School, which won six straight city titles before having its run snapped three years ago, moved back into the winner’s circle as it won the boys division with a team score of 316, seven shots better than runner-up Calvary Day School. The low four individual scores for each team counted.

In the girls division the two low scores counted and Saunders’ 44 was backed up by Laine Richardson’s 48 which enabled the Saints to beat SA by six shots.

Emily Daly was SA’s second low scorer with a 54. Lauren Rowe of Calvary Day School, a player with a never-ending smile on her face, shot a 47 to take third-place individually.

St. Vincent’s won the GHSA Class AA state championship last year in its sixth year of fielding a golf team. This was its first city championship.

It was debatable as to whether Saunders was going to play as she could not hit driver and had to take an abbreviated swing that had her basically punching the ball down the fairway.

Claiming medalist honors was the last thing on Saunders’ mind when she showed up to play. And it moved deeper into her thought process when she opened the day with a seven that included four putts.

Saunders suffered a big disappointment last year when she finished second by one shot, but the focus this year was the team.

“I wasn’t thinking about being medalist,” said Saunders, who normally shoots in the 36-38 range at Bacon Park. “I just wanted to see if I could post a score to help the team. We had never won the city so this was a big deal for us.”

Lotter, a ball of fire who appears to have the metabolism of a hummingbird, played what he called a steady round: three birdies and four bogeys to go with 11 pars.

“I had what I thought was a couple of bad breaks, but nothing that really hurt me,” Lotter said. “On No. 17, for example, I hit a really good shot but the green was hard and the ball bounced into the ditch but I was able to get up and down for bogey.”

Lotter’s score was good enough to enable him to win by four shots over teammate Connor Cohen and Brenden Tigert of Calvary. Benedictine’s Alex Bokina led the Cadets with a 77 while teammate Andrew Scarano and Savannah Christian’s Will Oliver had 78s.

Lotter admitted he came to the course with a goal of being medalist in mind.

“You can’t win four if you don’t win the first one,” Lotter said. “I want to be the medalist every year I play.”

Moreau couldn’t say enough about the gutty performance turned in by Saunders.

“She really stepped up,” Moreau said. “I told her ‘You’re going to play like my 90-year-old mother.’ You can hit it straight by hitting hybrids and using only your putting stroke.

“She had to hit it like grandma and grandma hits it pretty straight. She had to hit it without twisting her back…44 is a horrible score for her but an injured 44 and playing in the playoff was fabulous.”

The team win ended a lot of pent-up frustration for the Saints who had finished runner-up the last four years and had lost the last three years in playoffs.

Balance and consistency was the story for BC as Hughes Threlford shot an 80 and Will Ducey an 81 to support Bokina and Scarano.

“We played really well today,” BC coach Alex Lowry said. “The conditions were tough with the wind and cold. Those scores are about right around where we’ve been all season. In our first tournament we had four scores in the 70s.

“This time of year that’s a good place to be around (scoring). The boys can grind it out and that was one of the things I was most pleased with today. It was good to see their demeanor out there today—no one got ‘hot’—they just stuck it out and really grinded and came in with scores to get that trophy.”